Oaths of Allegiance in Colonial New England

by Charles Evans

Fac-Simile of Original Manuscript
in the Handwriting of John Winthrop,
in the Public Library of the City of Boston
Issued with Bulletin, July, 1894

The Capital Laws were printed at Cambridge in 1642, probably under the same restriction, as to number; and, as printed evidence, open to the same construction as the Oath. Whatever the purpose, however, it had been forestalled some four years earlier when the Capital Laws were re-printed in London in a folio broadside. The copy in the British Museum bears the Colophon: “Printed first in New-England, and re-printed in London for Ben. Allen in Popes-Head Allen [sic] 1643.”

Fourthly, a relation of that story of Jonas verbatim as it was delivered to me in writing by a Gentleman that was then a passenger in the ship.

“When the first ship that came this year 1646 from New-England, was almost ready to come from thence; Mr. Cotton in his Thursday-Lecture at Boston, preached out of that Scripture, Cant. 2, 15. Take us the little Foxes, &c. In his uses took occasion to say, That if any shall carry any Writings, Complaints against the people of God in that Country it would be a Jonas in the ship. * * He also advised the Ship-Master, that if storms did arise, to search if they had not in any Chest or Trunk any such Jonas aboard, which if you find (said he) I do not advise you to throw the persons over-board, but the Writings; or words to that effect. Whereupon, having great storms (as could not be otherwise expected) some of the Passengers remembering Mr. Cotton’s Sermon, it seems were much affected with what he had said; and a woman amongst them came up from between the decks about Midnight, or after, in a distracted passionate manner to Mr. William Vassall who lay in the great Cabin, but for the present was in the Sterage-door-way looking abroad: she earnestly desired him, if there were any Jonas in the ship, that as Mr. Cotton had directed it might be thrown over-board, with many broken expressions to that purpose. He asked her why she came to him? and she said because it was thought that he had some Writings against the people of God: but he answered her, He had nothing but a Petition to the Parliament that they might enjoy the liberty of English subjects, and that could be no Jonas; and that if the best of New-Englands friends could shew him any evil in that, he would not prefer it. After this she went into the great Cabin to Mr. Tho. Fowle in like distracted manner; who told her he had nothing but the Copy of Petition which himself and others had presented to the Court at Boston; and showed, and read it to her, and then told her, That if she and others thought that to be the cause of the storm, she and they might do what they would with it; but he professed that he saw no evil in it, neither was his Conscience troubled with it. So she took it and carried it between Decks to them from whom she came, and they agreed to throw it over-board and it was thrown over-board: but the storm did not leave us upon the throwing of the Paper over-board as it is reported; for they had many great storms after that; much lesse was the great and wonderfull deliverance which by Gods mercy he gave unto them from shipwrack and drowning at the Isles of Silly, upon the throwing of that Writing over-board; for that was thrown over long before, at least 14 dayes. Also the error is the more in this, That the report is that it was the petition to the Parliament that was thrown over-board; and it was only a Copy of a Petition to their own Court at Boston, and the Petition to the Parliament was still in the ship, together with another copy of that which was thrown over-board, and other writings of that nature, some of which are printed in this book, and were as well saved as their lives and other goods, and are here in London to be seen and made use of in convenient time.”

It is true that at any time in the intervening years of a quarter of a century I could have written to the British Museum authorities and been sure of a courteous reply; but the matter seemed too important to be settled in so prosaic a way. This, and the hope that sometime I might be able to determine the matter personally, and achieve the honor that would attach to its discovery, deterred me.

I suppose that men of all professions, in their callings, feel an unwonted glow in the achievement of some object; but I know of no greater joy than that which fills the lover of books when his long search for a rare book is rewarded. Then it is that you seem to enter into the holy of holies of delight, when the whole body thrills with suppressed emotions, the eyes moisten, and the trembling hand stretched out to take the volume does so with a touch which is almost a caress. The feeling, I think, must be somewhat akin to the “buck fever” of the deer hunter, whose mind and shaking limbs refuse to function, as he looks into the luminous eyes, and notes the startled look, and graceful beauty of his prey, until it has bounded into safety in the forest. Why, I reasoned with myself, should I give to another the pleasure of these emotions which were mine by right of discovery.

The opportunity of voyaging to England, which I had so long looked forward to, did not come to me until the Spring of the present year, and the pleasant anticipations with which I set out were comparable in my own mind with those which must have animated the Knights of Arthur’s Round Table in their quest for the holy grail. The morning after my arrival in London found me an early visitor at the British Museum. The preliminaries of admittance to the Reading-Room are not difficult, and are soon over with, and I found myself within the great rotunda, its walls lined in tiers with what is best in the literatures of the world, and from which has gone out so much that is worth while in English literature. From the Catalogue I filled out slips for some half dozen works, artfully to conceal the one uppermost in my mind, handed them in at the desk, and returned to my chosen seat to await with such calmness as I could command the culmination of years of desire. Heeding the legend that when the grail was approached by any one not perfectly pure it vanished from sight; and that to be qualified to discover it one must be perfectly chaste in thought and act, I endeavored to prepare myself for its appearance. Somewhere I have read of an Oriental visionary who attained a high degree of saintly perfection by fixing his gaze steadfastly for hours upon his navel, which a growing embonpoint made an easy thing to do, and I sought for holiness in the same way.

In time the white slips of my wants came fluttering back to me by messengers, all marked, very properly for security on account of rarity, that they could only be consulted in the North Library, until all were in but the one most desired. Then followed a much longer wait and then—the slip was handed back to me with a notation that I had given a wrong shelf-mark! Gone in an instant were all the perfectly pure and chaste thoughts with which I had been regaling myself while I was apparently looking at the wrong button on my vest. I think I could have stood the blow better if it had been that hoary old fiction of careless assistants that it was “out”, but this is a boon denied to any assistant in the British Museum, where nothing is allowed to go out. A comparison with the printed Catalogue showed an exact correspondence, and I sought the Superintendent of the Reading-Room, who assured me that the matter would have his personal attention; and for the rest of the day I busied myself with my other wants in the North Library without any word of the missing broadside reaching me. That evening, in communion with myself, I determined to throw off the mask of secrecy and frankly confide the importance of my quest to the Keeper of the Printed Books—the somewhat expressive and imposing title of the Librarian of the British Museum.

Before calling upon him I sought as an introducer Henry N. Stevens—the worthy son of an illustrious father who follows closely in his footsteps as the best authority on early printed American books in Europe—at his shop across the street from the imposing Museum building, and to him I told my story. As I proceeded his interest grew, and before I had finished he excitedly grasped my arm with one hand and his hat with the other, exclaiming: “Come with me. This is not a subject for underlings,” and rushed me across the street without pause until we were in the sanctum sanctorum of the learned and accomplished Keeper, Alfred W. Pollard. And to him I told my simple tale, and asked his assistance. Mr. Pollard is himself a bibliographer of note in his special field, and my story was not without interest to him, but he refused to share my belief that the missing broadside was what I supposed it to be, laying much stress upon the black-letter feature as proof of its English origin. The unsuccessful search for the missing broadside had evidently been called to his notice, and the failure to produce anything in the millions of books catalogued in that vast collection, he considered a challenge to the efficiency of himself and his staff of assistants. A few days later, he acknowledged failure; but gave me the interesting information that in tracing the broadside back to its accession he had found that it was acquired by the Museum in the year 1865, and formed part of a bundle of miscellaneous matter, being considered of so little importance as not even to have been mentioned in the contents of the bundle. Printing of the letter F of the Catalogue was completed in 1888, and since that time an expansion of the classification of books upon the shelves had been made, from which dated its disappearance. He would not, however, discontinue his efforts to find it. After apologizing for giving him a “bad half-hour,” which only the importance of the broadside excused, our second interview ended. On my last day in London, I went again with Mr. Stevens to call on Mr. Pollard about the matter, and told him that I had made my arrangements to fly from London to Paris on the morrow, and asked him if these old eyes of mine were never to behold the holy grail. “In black-letter?” he queried, touching the weak spot in my armor. “In duodecimo!” I countered, pointing to the rent in his own. And the third interview ended with his assurance that the search would go on until the missing broadside was found.